UN: Record civilian slaughter in chaotic Iraq

Thousands flee amid unchecked violence

BAGHDAD — The toll of Iraqi civilians has mounted steadily in the country's unremitting violence, with at least 3,709 civilian deaths in October, the highest count so far, the UN reported in its bleakest assessment since the U.S.-led invasion.

Last month's total was up nearly 400 from September and 700 more than in August, with the violence now taking an average of 120 lives each day, the report said.

The continued slaughter of civilians as well as increasing poverty has forced more than 2 million people from their homes, most of them fleeing the country. Every month, nearly 100,000 Iraqis flee to neighboring Jordan and Syria, the UN found.

That grim portrait comes as U.S. officials and Iraqis approach major decisions on the future of the country. At the White House and the Pentagon, officials have been debating whether a short-term increase in troops might succeed in tamping down Iraq's increasing carnage. Administration critics have been pushing for a plan to begin cutting the number of U.S. troops.

Sectarian killings and insurgent attacks have caused much of the current violence in Iraq, with a majority of deaths taking place in Baghdad, according to the United Nations bimonthly report on the violence. This summer, thousands of U.S. troops fanned out across the capital in a much-touted effort to bring a degree of calm, but the plan failed.

Killings by security forces

The UN report details a land of horrors where Iraqi security forces kill those they are meant to protect, gunmen prey upon the weakest, and the judicial system is practically in shambles.

The estimated rate of 120 violent civilian deaths a day would add up to about 44,000 over a full year. The UN based the civilian deaths on figures from the Baghdad morgue and the Iraqi Health Ministry. On Wednesday at least 101 Iraqis were reported killed in assassinations and bombings, authorities said.

Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the UN human-rights office in Baghdad, presented the world body's report inside the capital's high-security Green Zone. He told reporters that while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has "taken a number of important steps in protecting human rights," more should be done to improve the rule of law.

The enormity of the country's situation is laid out over a broad spectrum.

"Many of the death squads and rival militias have direct links with or are supported by influential political parties belonging to the government and are not hiding their affiliation," according to the report. "Militias and other armed groups are said to be in control of whole areas in the east and west of Baghdad and continue to carry out illegal policing, manning of checkpoints and `dispensation of justice' through illegal trials and extrajudicial executions."

Abuse, secret prisons

Among the problems cited are instances of arbitrary arrests, allegations of torture and sexual abuse, deplorable prison conditions, disorganization and a lack of judicial guarantees such as:

In northern Iraq, Kurdish militias allegedly hold detainees in secret prisons without trial for long periods.

The police and army are reportedly infiltrated by Shiite militias and death squads, and absenteeism is widespread.

In the northern city of Kirkuk alone, the report says, "half of the 5,000 police force and 13,000 army soldiers are not reporting to duty at any given time."

The report also says that operations by U.S. troops in Anbar province "continued to cause severe suffering to the local population."

In the capital, entire neighborhoods have been depopulated according to sectarian affiliation. The report cites one mixed neighborhood where Shiite militias warned Sunni families to leave within 24 hours. Gunmen then reportedly burned two houses with the residents inside.

Among acts of official malfeasance, Magazzeni highlighted abuses at a secret Interior Ministry detention facility discovered last year in a Baghdad bunker that was investigated by the Iraqi government. So far, the government has not made public any of its findings.

70 juveniles to a cell

Recently, the report says, American and Iraqi inspectors found 284 prisoners, ages 7 to 22, "in deplorable hygiene and medical conditions with signs of physical and sexual abuse allegedly committed by the prison guards and/or by their fellow inmates" in another prison on the western outskirts of the capital. The juveniles were crammed 70 to each cell and were without enough food or water. Some had not yet been charged with any crime. At least 41 bore signs of mistreatment, torture and sexual abuse.

"The more there is impudence and no one is punished for their crimes, the more that fuels the cycle of violence and counterviolence," Magazzeni said. Bringing people to justice will be key to restoring order in the country, he said.